Ready to leave in Opua

I have been somewhat remiss in updating the blog—somehow as it is our third season in NZ it does not seem exotic and although it is a wonderful place to cruise and visit it is hard to be motivated to keep the blog updated.
Anchored under Mount Manganui after our tedious motoring trip from Wellington was lovely but we knew our time was short to be sure we would arrive at Waiheke Island before Kristen and the children would arrive. Bruce and Alene, having been our constant hopscotch cruiser friends this season are here but also need to keep moving as they are flying back to the States for a visit.
Phil, our mechanic from Wellington, arrived at the boat in the morning and helped sort out a number of issues—he did seal the leak we had but at the same time diagnosed another couple of minor things which enabled us to fix them now rather than some distant port in a far away land with no amenities. It is almost worth paying him for an inspection from time to time as he is an expert at spotting pending issues.
We set off to Great Mercury Island with Alene and Bruce, this time to share our special diving spot for yet more scallops. Diving for them is quite fun as the scallops are partly buried in the sand but if you drop one as you pick it up they swim by opening and shutting the shells. This makes the fish seem to have more personality and I cringe slightly as I open the shell for harvesting—not enough to forgo the meal. The quest was once again very fruitful and provided another monster scallop feed for dinner.
The forecast was not promising so rather than spend another few days chilling we thought we should keep going to get up to Great Barrier Island and around Cape Colleville to Waiheke.
We parted ways with Bruce and Alene as they headed to Whangarei and we arrived once again at the picturesque Waiheke Island. We found a sheltered anchorage and sat out the three days of strong winds in comfort. The island with it’s proximity to Auckland and it’s hippy/yuppy combination reminds us so much of a somewhat more tropical Salt Spring Island which we love.
Kristen and the children arrived and it was lovely to have them aboard once again—Kyle having started his new job needed to stay in Wellington and work so we were grateful he was happy for Kristen to come and visit us.
We spent the week going from beach to beach, interspersed with ice cream shops and playgrounds. We spent one day going to Auckland in the ferry and visiting Kelly Tarlton’s aquarium, renowned for it’s Antarctic display of the incredibly beautiful Emperor Penguins. Another day was spent at the Saturday market but due to pending rain a number of outdoor vendors did not come.
After a week it was time for them to go back to Wellington and we traded them for our next visitors which were Janet (Tony, my ex-husband’s sister) and her husband John. They had a couple of days with us around Waiheke successfully catching numerous large snapper in a very short time. As they arrived Janet had joked that she could eat fish every meal and it certainly would have been very easy although I draw the line at breakfast. Last year when we were here we struggled to catch legal size fish but this year in an hour or two we had as many as we could manage to eat and store. Apparently the La Nina system makes the water warmer and somehow happier fish!!
We enjoyed having them aboard and managed to give them a favourable impression of boat life. We went to the market again stocking up with more homemade products to take with us offshore.
After they left we headed up to Kawau Island which is another favourite place of ours to shelter for yet another three days of gale winds. We were able to go ashore and hike the numerous trails so was very pleasant. The one thing we are now used to is no matter what the weather looks like this far north is that the temperatures are very mild so with a good jacket and a sheltered bay you are not “boat bound’.
I took the time to do our tax returns and we decided that this was the time to try and back up our ipod onto our new computer. As most of you are aware we are not exactly computer savvy but we purchased a programme online which promised to do it ‘at the click of a button”!!!! Many clicks later we had successfully wiped off the 6000 songs we had on the ipod!!! We had spent many hours in Calgary before leaving downloading every CD we and all of our friends in Calgary owned. Feeling distinctly sick about it at this stage we put it all away to deal with at a later date.
Our next stop was up at the Town Basin in Whangarei where we sought out the amazing array of odd things for sale at “Arthurs”. Every place should have an Arthurs---they have the oddest selection and I was able to find small corks for a salt shaker, a new plug for our odd sized kitchen sink, outdoor mosquito netting to make covers for hatches and small galvanised chain as an anchor to hold them around the hatches so the nasty Asian—not to mention Australian—mosquitos can not get in our boat. We do have covers on most of the hatches but some of them are not really tight. We also picked up some more school supplies—last year I had got some math sets from there—and small balls for children we meet on our journey this year.
We took a pile of books we had read to trade in at the great used book store hoping to lighten the load on the boat but ended up with an even larger box of books—oh well hard to resist.
When visiting the video store to rent some movies we had to pay the $4 late fee I had incurred 3 years ago—the curse of computers!!!
We also took our old desktop computer which was no longer working in to a computer shop where they managed to salvage our songs onto a hard drive so we happily took the hard drive and left the old computer.
Now it was time to go down to Norsand Boatyard where would be hauled yet again to redo the antifoul and several other small jobs.
Their system is to load you on a trailer and take out and launch one boat a day at high tide. They are incredibly busy at this time of year and we would be out for two weeks.
I took the opportunity to go back to Wellington for one last visit with Mum and Kristen and family. It has been nice to spend so much time with Adelyn and Grayson this year and become part of their lives. On my return Betsy and Richard from Qayaq picked me up at the airport and we had a lovely if not short visit until my bus to Whangarei.
They are returning to the States to settle and will sell their boat in NZ. It is always sad when friends decide their cruising time is done although as they are in Seattle we will no doubt see them again. We met them in Mexico and have shared many pleasant times together over the years.
Just before we were due to go back in the water we had a rigging check only to find our forestay had hairline cracks at the swage so we now delayed another week while we had a new one made and sent up from Auckland. We had just had word that Brickhouse, a boat we had been with in Fiji was dismasted in the Marshall Islands with a faulty chain plate so once again we would rather find out our problems in controlled conditions.
The delay allowed us to visit one more time with Bruce and Alene who are back from the States. Bruce, the computer wiz was able to reload our ipod to our new computer with all of the songs!!!!!!!!
Finally three weeks from being hauled with a newly painted antifoul and a shiny white hull we relaunched.
Now was the 2 day passage up to Opua where we would await a weather window to leave for New Caledonia.
The first day was uneventful but we awoke to gusty head winds and nasty choppy seas and battled the 25 miles to the Bay of Islands where we were grateful to get out of it.
As we left the 29 boats going to Tonga this season with the ICA rally were leaving—glad it was them not us going out in that roll. This year due to La Nina has been much more unsettled than last and everyone is feeling anxious to leave. They had been waiting for a week and I think had enough but the key to a comfortable passage is patience.
We are still waiting for our window—we have renewed friendship with Doug on Windcastle who is here and last night invited Dave from Star for dinner. He is from Tasmania and has just got here from a harrowing 2 week passage which included a 360 degree rollover in 12 metre seas with winds to 80 knots. Luckily the crew of four sustained only minor cuts and bruises having been thrown in the roll and the boat other than water damage inside from a blown out window fared remarkably well. Sobering for all of us though and we are wishing Devalah and Mike on Sea Rover who are on the same passage right now a safe arrival. Our delay here will mean a reunion with them before they arrive to wait out the winter and attend the Rugby World Cup.
We should get a window in the next week or so and I will post the next blog once again from a tropical paradise.
We intend going to New Caledonia and will spend a week there before heading to Cairns in Australia and then around to Darwin.
On July 24th we will join the Indonesian Rally where will spend three months before we go on to Singapore and Malaysia where we will end up next November.